


Five Things Jack O'Neill Left Behind

by Reccea



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-14
Updated: 2010-10-14
Packaged: 2017-10-12 16:30:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,279
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/126849
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Reccea/pseuds/Reccea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After everything (after Charlie, after Abydos, after coming home to find that everything and nothing had changed) Jack had thought his team days were behind him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Things Jack O'Neill Left Behind

**Author's Note:**

> I was so incredibly tempted to just have the entire list be Daniel Jackson. Because Daniel's death count? Never not funny. The prompt was suggested by 20thcenturyvole and Smittywing did the beta.

**1\. Daniel Jackson**

 

Jack doesn't exactly feel good about leaving the geek on a whole other _planet_. He also doesn't feel that good about leaving in general. There's this gaping vortex of not-water in front of him and a desert of newly freed people behind him and for just one moment, Jack almost doesn't step through. He's pretty sure that he'd be better off -be more useful and more loved- if he stayed behind. But he has responsibilities and a life that he _can't_ leave behind. He has to learn to cope because he's already pretty good at running away.

Jackson's a weird kid, dopey and smart and not like anyone Jack would normally gravitate to. But still, if he were next to Jack, going through the gate back home, well... Jack's pretty sure he'd invite the guy over for a drink sometime. A little beer, maybe watch some hockey. Jack's pretty sure he'd try to be the guy's friend.

But Jackson isn't going back with him. He isn't ever going home. He's just going to be another person that Jack occasionally wonders about.

Jack would feel bad about it all, feel the loss, but the geek looks happy in a way Jack can't remember feeling anymore. Jackson's holding the hand of this girl he barely knows and Jack's sure that there's a greater future in that than anything that Jackson has waiting on Earth for him.

That's why Jack said yes. Why he promised to tell of Daniel's death and leave out that bit about resurrection.

Because he can't face the hope in Jackson's eyes and say no.

Jack turns back, just before he steps through, and Daniel waves at him, crooked glasses, floppy hair, and big happy smile.

Jack gives him a wave back, short and to the point, and then he walks into the wall of water.

 

 **2\. Expectations**

 

So this is SG-1: the Captain who's probably smarter than any general Jack's ever met, an alien marsupial with the ugliest tattoo Jack's ever seen, and the dorky, four-eyed kid who's got more faith in the world than Jack's ever had. Jack wants to take them all fishing already, only the Big Guy isn't allowed off base and ten-to-one Carter'd rather shoot herself than get stuck in a place where the greatest technological breakthrough is the porch light. Daniel'd probably go and spend the entire time trying to explain to Jack the Goauld effect on the early Egyptian dynasties or something. So Jack doesn't invite them.

After everything (after Charlie, after Abydos, after coming home to find that everything and nothing had changed) Jack had thought his team days were behind him. He'd figured that his future involved a lot of NHL, eating Guinness for dinner, and trying to find some sort of equilibrium. His future isn't looking quite like that after all.

Tomorrow he's going to another planet, again. And the day after that, he's booked a little shooting range time for him and the geek. And after that maybe he'll try teaching Teal'c about boxing (though maybe he'll just rent a few movies instead), and maybe he'll even let Carter talk tech (dirty) to him.

Point being, he has plans.

Three weeks ago, Jack was on his couch trying to decide on pizza or Chinese when the USAF knocked on his door. Yesterday, he was in Hammond's office, mapping out possible first contact strategies and making jokes about life in the Star Trek universe. He respects Hammond, which is a shock, and even more so is the fact that he likes the guy. He likes working for him.

So Jack's laying his past to rest and driving home from Cheyenne Mountain with Jackson (who still hasn't found an apartment and is still more depressed about Sha're than he'll say, which Jack understands) and thinking about tomorrow.

He feels good. Happy, maybe. Ready for the future.

 

 **3\. Guilt**

 

If it wasn't one thing or another, it was goddamn aliens. Not exactly what Jack had been expecting out of life, really, but he's beginning to get used to it. He expected that sometimes he'd have to roll with the punches and sometimes he'd get to punch back. But making him face the doppelganger of his dead son was just hitting below the belt.

Jack gets that the alien was just trying to understand humanity but he wishes to God that it had picked someone else to understand it through. It's not like Jack's grasp is all that great to begin with and he likes to keep his self awareness to a bare minimum.

And he wants to never, ever share Charlie's death with anyone else. Ever. He thinks he deserves that.

He misses Charlie with an ache that he carries every day, deep in his bones. And not even snake aliens, or space travel through a giant ring of water, or flying fucking spaceships is ever going to distract him from it, separate him from it.

The point the alien was trying to make, and one that he's beginning to feel sink into his bones, is that the guilt is something he can live without.

It's a weird epiphany to come to, so long after, and from such a bizarre source. But that's his life now, bizarre to the hilt. And it wasn't like he'd have gotten there sitting by the lake and fishing without Charlie beside him, pretending to catch sharks.

He's got work in the morning, way too early, because his whole team has to sit and talk to Hammond and promise to never let another alien -except maybe Teal'c- interact with the general populace. Ever. But after that it's a long weekend, with no plans and no expectations.

He's thinking maybe it's time to see if he can get Teal'c a Get Out of Jail Free card and drag the team up to his cabin. They probably wouldn't get around to fishing (knowing Carter, it would be avoided at all cost) but Jack would pay serious money to watch Teal'c play charades, to have Daniel explain the deep significance of Jenga, and make Carter outline the point of Twister.

Jack's thinking maybe he's ready to have fun.

 

 **4\. Desire**

 

Truth is, he's kind of in love with Carter. And he's almost kissed Daniel too many times to remember. If Teal'c didn't have the pouch (that whole Hathor thing left Jack more freaked about Junior than he'd been before) there's a chance...

Except, of course, that there's no chance at all. Jack's in charge of this team, he's responsible for keeping them going, for keeping them intact.

They deserve not to have him fuck it up. And Jack could fuck it up, so so easy.

Jack knows how it all could be. He can see it, easily. The ways it all could go right (and he'll deny fantasies about watching Sam and Daniel go at it on his kitchen floor -if only because it wasn't his fault that they'd dropped a beer the last time they'd all gotten together and Jack had walked in on them on their hands and knees, heads pressed together, picking glass off the wet floor). He's pretty sure that it'd take just two steps to the left and they'd all be sleeping together. People have a tendency to fuck after a brush with death and they brush death once a month at the best of times. There have been moments between them all when all it would have taken was one action, one space closed, for the team to transform into something else (evolve).

But he knows how quickly it could go bad. He doesn't think jealousy would be a problem, not really, because they've gotten used to living in each other's skins and sharing everything they have and are. The problem isn't anything so simple as that.

They need Jack. They need him to be who he is, to stand a little apart, to push them and yell at them and forge them into what they are. Jack plays it dumb a lot (more and more as the years go by because he knows he doesn't have to listen, that they'll save the world in the end and he's good with that.) But Jack isn't dumb, he's just a different shade of smart and he sees the world as it is, not as he would make it.

And he sees the chinks in his team. The little things that are calling each of them to different places. There are a hundred projects at Area 51 just asking for Carter's magic touch, a hundred planets Daniel wants to reach to learn to understand, and a nation that Teal'c should probably be leading. But Jack knows, and hell, Hammond's agreed more than once, so clearly Jack's not blowing smoke here, that the four of them together are magic. Together they'll change the universe.

But they're a tenuous balance, the four of them. One of those mixtures that could explode if you favor one chemical over the others. And Jack's pretty much figured out that if he let it happen, if he let them happen, then he'd have to let go of who he is to them.

Teal'c's not of this earth, Jackson and Carter are constantly reaching for the stars and it's Jack who grounds them, who holds them steady. He can't do that if he's reaching for stars of his own.

 

 **5\. SG-1**

 

Being The Man sucks just about as much as he'd always figured. Seriously, he's going to have to talk to George because this is the last shit job he plans to inherit. Director of Homeworld Security is really code for "Asgard Pacifier." And that's pacifier as in sucked-on-baby-chew-toy. Because if O'Neill isn't involved in the Asgard negotiations, then there's nothing but ugliness and eventual teleportation into said negotiations. That one Jack's learned the hard way.

The one really great thing about his job, though, is the fact that he can order Daniel to do _really annoying_ shit (like read D-movie scripts and barter with the Russians) and not have to hear Daniel whine about it. He doesn't need to actually see Daniel's reaction to get that thrill of satisfaction.

It's lonely, sure, but Jack's good with lonely. He could spend the rest of his life out on his lake just him (and his fish) and not mind one bit.

Going back to the SGC feels like a layover. Just a pit stop before getting to the place he's really going. He spent nine years of his life going in and out of the Gateroom, taking the elevator and getting teleported out of it, eating in the mess and doing his best to avoid Carter's lab. But those nine years feel like they happened nine years ago when he looks at Cam sitting with his team. It doesn't make Jack feel old (the aches and pains do that all on their own) but it hammers the whole thing home.

This isn't his life anymore.

He's strangely okay with that.

They're not his team anymore. Teal'c has hair that's even more ridiculous than before, Carter's got this annoyed tilt to her mouth, and you could park a car in the furrow of Daniel's brow. His Teal'c (his bald, snake carrying Teal'c) meditated during debriefings and only needed to carry the one (really big) gun. His Carter was wide eyed and exuberant and was always secretly delighted to be the one sitting in front of the alien device and fixing it before it blew up a solar system. His Daniel was wide eyed and exuberant and openly delighted to uncover the mysteries of every civilization (living or dead) that they came across.

His team had fire and optimism and saved the world every night before dinner and they did it because they loved it. Because it was new and exciting and because they could.

Mitchell's SG1 is just totally phoning it in.

And Jack doesn't blame them one bit. They've ended the Goauld regime (mostly) and they toasted the Replicators. They've met Nox and Asgards and Ancients, built spaceships and super weapons and blew up suns and some of them have even died once or twice (or five times). They deserve to retire. Or at least get promoted. They deserve not to be the frontline, the only defense, the last ditch effort.

It's time, well past time, to grow up and move on and detach. And Jack has done just that.

Sure, his job isn't glamorous and he doesn't get to shoot at things but he doesn't get stuck in the infirmary with alien herpes or brand new orifices either. And when he sees Daniel, Teal'c, and Carter he can sit there and have a beer and not worry that he's going to have drive his ass back to Cheyenne at two in the morning because there was an unscheduled activation and Walter let invisible aliens through.

He gets to stay behind the scenes and let the new kid save the world.

Because there's a point where you evenutally roll the dice and come up snake eyes. There's always a moment where your luck turns. And Jack is, frankly, tired of trying to cheat death.

He likes to think that eventually the rest of SG-1 will get tired of it too. But he's not holding his breath.

When Jack thinks of the future- which isn't very often but when he _does_ \- he likes to think of them all sitting down for dinner together. But when he's honest with himself, he knows he'll be the last one standing. If only because he's the only one among them willing to let go.


End file.
